the devil in the details

[isocelesmonster]

Who: Bill Cipher
Broadcast: none
Action: Anywhere in the fleet
When: The night of the 22nd, and ongoing.

Although ostensibly the Golden has a new crew member, there's no new person in attendance at any meals. No new faces in the hall, nothing additional in the laundry. One of the standard crew cabins has been sealed up as tight as a tomb, the brass nameplate on the door unhelpfully scratched out with something sharp. No noises at all come from inside.

It'd take a careful eye to notice the only other change: the same sharp instrument has been used to carve little eyes of providence, no bigger than a fingernail, in strategic public places around the ship. They're shallow markings, not deep enough to interfere with any of the working parts of the craft, and no great works of art - each little scrap of graffiti is a matter of five lines at most. But they're there - and if sometimes the way the gold of the metal hull glints in the pupil is strangely canny, it's probably nothing to be worried about.

(It's not that Bill doesn't care about the flesh puppets that make up his new crew - oh, he does, they're all going to get very careful scrutiny over the coming days - but more important is finding out what his new playground looks like.)

When the fleet sleeps, their minds open and blossom like night-blooming flowers, each one illuminating a new section of the shared dreaming plane. For all of their poetry, few humans realize that the state of dreaming is as real an exploration as whatever meaningless actions they take while awake. It's irrelevant to their survival, most days, so evolution has never sought to provide that particular revelation. They're a young species. Five senses, auditory languages, limited psychic potential, and as far as they know when they dream they're just watching random electrical impulses fire in their brains. Ha!

(There's an expression about a one-eyed man's status in a land of the blind, and Bill intends to make it a reality.)

He steps sideways out of the material world into the closest dream as easily as a three-dimensional being can move along any of their limited axes. He makes himself invisible, at first, just to get his bearings.

[Bill is visiting dreams, as a way of saying hello! His permissions post for this ability is here. I am treating this ability on an opt-in basis. If you didn't give me the okay, he won't be spying on your character at all tonight ~but where's the fun in that~?]
ZOGSLFTS GSRH DVZP ZMW RWOV GSVNV

RH ML NLIV BRVOWRMT YFG Z WIVZN

DSVM NLIMRMT GZPVH BLF UILN NB GSIZOO

YV TOZW R OVG BLF DZPV ZG ZOO

Comments

[sonofgold]

That's right. I don't like killing or even hurting people if I can escape it... sometimes reason works better than fists.

[It had even worked on Scar, in the end.]

Well... it attached my soul to the armor when I got separated from my human body. Your blood contains your soul, and the iron in the blood bonds to the iron in the armor, thus binding the soul to it as well.

[isocelesmonster]

OH I ALWAYS GO TO PERSUASION FIRST! A FEW GOOD WORDS CAN TURN LOTS OF BAD SITUATIONS INTO OPPORTUNITIES INSTEAD!

[Like this one.]

I DON'T HAVE ANY BLOOD! DO I HAVE A SOUL?

[It's really not something he cares about, hence the breezy tone.]

[sonofgold]

Yeah. Negotiation can go a long way toward diffusing a bad situation... and remembering that the person on the other side of the argument has their own feelings and their own reasons for doing things.

[Al shrugged.]

I believe every living thing has a soul- but you probably don't believe in them, do you?

[tetractys]

OH, I BELIEVE THERE WAS SOMETHING YOU BOUND TO THIS!

[Bill zooms over and knocks on the armor again. Clang clang.]

CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT! LET'S GO WITH "SOUL"! BUT YOU'RE A SCIENTIST - HOW DO YOU USE SOMETHING IN AN EQUATION IF IT CAN'T BE QUANTIFIED?

[sonofgold]

[Al shrugged.]

We just don't know how to quantify it yet- and Brother is a genius, anyway. I don't think he even quite remembers how it happened, since he just clapped his hands and transmuted, but he did it.

[tetractys]

ANYBODY EVER TELL YOU YOU'RE A LITTLE CODEPENDENT, TIN MAN?

[sonofgold]

Brother and I have always been together. Of course we're dependent on each other.

[tetractys]

BUT I DIDN'T ASK WHAT HE THOUGHT, YA KNOW. HOW DO YOU THINK IT WORKS?

[sonofgold]

I don't see being codependent as a bad thing. Brother and I are a team, and he's sacrificed a lot to help me.

[tetractys]

[Bill rolls his big eye. Wow he super doesn't care about this.]

UH HUH. AND WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO IF YOU NEVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN? THAT'S A REAL POSSIBILITY HERE! THE ATROMA'S NOT A BUNCH TO MESS AROUND WITH!

[sonofgold]

Then I'll make other friends and find other people to support. I haven't seen Brother in months and have a lot of people I'm close to.

[tetractys]

YA KNOW, USUALLY THE WORD "TEAM" GETS COINED BY SOMEONE WHO'S TRYING TO GET OTHER PEOPLE TO DO PIPE DOWN AND LET THEM MAKE ALL THE DESICIONS! NOT THAT I THINK YOUR HUMAN FRIENDS WOULD EVER DO THAT! HAHA!

[sonofgold]

Oh, of course not- you don't sound like the type who looks down on human relationships at all.

[tetractys]

AW, HUMANS ARE GREAT!

[Bill flies in a little corkscrew spiral, up and up.]

WHEN YOU'VE BEEN AROUND AS LONG AS I HAVE, YOU JUST SEE A LOT OF THE SAME PATTERNS OVER AND OVER! SOMETIMES YOU STILL SURPRISE ME, THOUGH! FOR EXAMPLE!

[Bill blurs, and suddenly he's sitting in the image of the blood seal, his little stick legs dangling like he's in a tire swing.]

THIS PIECE OF WORK!

[He pats the baleful red of the mark fondly.]

NOW, YOUR BROTHER MIGHT HAVE INCANTED THIS, BUT YOU LIVED IT! YOU'VE GOTTA KNOW SOMETHING.

[sonofgold]

[And now Bill was sounding like the Homunculi- they thought humans were predictable, and Father had planned his sacrifices accordingly. But they still managed to surprise those monsters, every now and then.]

No, Brother never told me much about how he sealed my soul to the armor- and I wasn't exactly conscious to see it happening myself. You wouldn't want to be able to put your soul in something else, anyway. It's not a great existence.

[tetractys]

SO YOU COULDN'T TELL ME WHAT IT WAS LIKE?

[Bill sounds... disappointed. He floats down from sitting in the mark.]

HEY, WE CAN BOTH AGREE IT'S BETTER THAN BEING DISEMBODIED.

[sonofgold]

No. When the accident happened and my body vanished, I just... kind of regained consciousness in the armor. I'm not sure Brother even knows with 100% certainty.

[Al crossed his arms.]

My armor body could only see and hear. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't feel warmth... and sooner or later, the body rejects the soul. It doesn't belong anywhere but its own body.

[tetractys]

HEY, DON'T I KNOW IT. I'VE NEVER HAD ONE OF MY OWN AT ALL.

[sonofgold]

That body you're in right now isn't yours?

[tetractys]

WHAT, THIS?

[Bill peers down at himself.]

THIS IS JUST A FIGMENT, BUDDY! IT JUST COMES FROM MY IMAGINATION INSTEAD OF YOURS! YOU CAN ONLY SEE IT BECAUSE YOU'RE ASLEEP!

[sonofgold]

Well, that makes sense, I guess. But why did you choose to be a one-eyed triangle, if it comes from your imagination?

[tetractys]

WHY DIDN'T YOU?

[sonofgold]

Because I'm a human... and I was this armor for a while. So it makes sense to think of myself this way.

[tetractys]

HEY, YOUR LOSS!

[Bill stretches both sides of his little bow tie out until they snap back into place. He likes this form. It has just enough in common with his first one to feel like himself, but it also has limbs and a rudimentary face and all those things that humans need in order to be able to perceive him as a being rather than an inanimate object.]

THERE'S A LOT OF OLD MAGIC TIED TO THIS IMAGE! MOSTLY STUFF I MADE!

[Bill waves his hand at the floating alchemical symbols.]

IT'D BE A SHAME TO LET ALL OF THAT GO TO WASTE!

[sonofgold]

Suppose so. But I'd feel weird being anything other than human or armor, myself. It'd be too much like trying to be something I'm not.